


Honeyed Brandy

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [18]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers Who Want to Kill Each Other, F/F, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, when I call this femslash hatesex I mean I can’t write over pg13 for love or money
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: ”Next time," she said, "I'll go off by myself. You'll never know.”





	1. fire in your belly; bile in your bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danceswithscissors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithscissors/gifts).



> Uh, how do I warn for this? Enthusiastic consent on both sides, but it’s between two people, both manipulative murderers, who recently tried to kill each other, so...
> 
> (Set not long after "Nocturne" and "Answer and Question", if continuity is your bag.

“Enter,” she said, adjusting a gauzy scarf threaded with gold around her throat and looking at herself critically in the mirror of the vanity. With a faint rasp still in her throat, she said, “put the honeyed brandy on the side table, Kitty.”

But the woman who slipped into her upstairs room in a forest green dress with a steaming decanter on a tray wasn’t the maid, but an old… acquaintance, Dolores Martinez of Spain, last seen running into the night with her blood on a blade. She walked quietly to the table, put down her burden neatly, and turned, raising a pistol.

“Of all the luck,” she said, in a low and pleasing voice. “Fancy meeting you here tonight. Do I call you Milady de Winter?”

“If you like,” de Winter said to the mirror in which she watched Martinez, “But if you’ve scratched my maid I’m afraid we’ll have to have words.”

“Pff,” the other said. “Torturing the hired staff is beneath me. She’s sleeping off a few drops of a little something. Where’s Aramis?”

“You mean you don’t know? _Tcch,_ that’s sloppy. He’s out murdering,” she said carelessly, “it’s really very sweet.”

“So you can tell the truth then.” Dolores’ lips curved into a smile. “How lovely that we have time for a chat.”

“I don’t talk to loaded guns,” she said, eyes bright. She turned gracefully and set one elbow on the arched back of her chair, one hand resting languidly, hidden in her crimson skirts.

“I’d be a fool to give up an advantage,” Dolores said in a sing-song voice.

“You were a fool not to shoot as soon as you walked in the door,” de Winter answered, grinning, her voice sweet as honey over gravel. “But you want something, do you not? My words before I die. What will you trade for them, hm?” Dolores’ blue eyes shot to the hand hidden in de Winter’s skirts. “Oh dear…” de Winter cooed. “Am I so fearsome that you’re afraid to try me in a fair fight? I am _desolate,_ truly.”

Dolores’ nostrils flared. Her chin came up. And then, without taking her eyes off de Winter she set her pistol on the table next to the steaming decanter and took into her hand a long steel knife from a slit hidden in her skirt. “Fair’s fair,” she said softly.

De Winter’s eyes flickered to the knife, and then she stood up slowly, holding her hands - both empty - wide. She sauntered up to the assassin, smiling slightly, and, when she was in arm’s reach, slapped Dolores, hard. The knife came up and she stepped back, hand’s wide again, with an innocent look in her bright eyes. “Lesson the first,” she said, “never fight fair.”

“You’re strong for a… woman of a certain age,” said Dolores, even as the colour stood high in her cheek. “But I have limited patience before I kill you. This is only to make my mother happy, you understand: she grieves. So. How did my sister die?”

“It was very quick,” said de Winter, sympathy dwelling in her eyes. “She can’t have felt much of it.” Deliberately, she added, _”She didn’t struggle at all.”_ Dolores snarled and dove at her, the knife a vicious silver tooth. De Winter moved into the blow and they spun around each other like a couple in a contra-dance until de Winter let go and the younger assassin stumbled away from her, falling against the lilac-and-gold-papered wall hard enough to shake out her breath. Delicately, de Winter scooped up the knife Dolores had dropped and tested the edge against her thumb. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully.

“Lesson the second,” she said, hammering it into the wood of the side table too deeply to pull out easily, “anger makes you stupid.”

Dolores showed her teeth, lungs grappling for air.

“Oh, there’s strength to anger,” de Winter amended. “It puts fire in your belly and bronze in your sinews. I could walk a hundred miles on the ice and not die, did I keep the bile in my bones. But stupid? Oh my, yes,” she purred. “Don’t let anger throw off your aim, little kitten.” Tutting, she turned away to poke at the vanity table, squinting in disfavour at the locks of inky hair that had fallen out of their pins. Silently, Dolores pattered after her and jumped on her back. She tossed the girl over her shoulder without much effort and, as she stumbled, pinned her against the wall with her hand against her throat and one arm stretched high. “Seriously?” she asked. “I was _looking_ at a _mirror_. I want to believe you’re better than this, but this is honestly a little disappointing.”

The fingers of Dolores’ free hand worked.

“Perhaps you should reconsider that,” de Winter purred. She watched with interest the expressions play over the younger woman’s face: frustration, rage, calculation. Finally Dolores dropped her eyes and when she raised them they were softer. She let out a little sigh, relaxing into the wall, and tipped up her neat chin. De Winter’s red mouth curved into a smile and she leaned in close enough to smell the amber-rich perfume in the cloudy masses of Dolores’ hair. The pulse in the woman’s throat quickened under her hand and her lips parted. De Winter let herself lean in, her grip loosening, until she felt the breath move against her, in the bellows of Dolores’ ribs under the solid stays of a respectable woman. She released the younger woman’s wrist - Dolores didn’t move - and touched a loose strand of chestnut hair at her temple. Smiling softly, she tucked it back behind her ear and dropped her hand to Dolores’ waist where it settled, the thumb finding a spot where the cloth was soft between the stays and rubbing lightly. Dolores sighed, the pupils of her eyes dilating. De Winter moistened her lips and tipped her head in as the younger woman’s eyes drooped shut. Taking her time, she kissed Dolores at the corner of her eye, where she could feel the eyelash flutter against her lips.

She laughed.

As Dolores’ eyes shot open, she gave her a little shake and released her throat. “A commendable attempt,” she said, turning away.

Dolores shoved her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“I could walk a hundred miles on the ice and not die.”_ \- I always loved the Werewolf’s speech from _Prince Caspian._


	2. the games we play

De Winter heard the young woman behind her and turned with the movement like a knight’s quintain, letting it power the arm which backhanded Dolores’ other cheek with a sharp crack. She staggered again, almost spitting with rage.

“My partner would probably have an apt bible verse for this situation,” de Winter said idly, stepping away again. “What _I_ can say is that you should have shot me from a distance.” She poured a slug of the hot brandy into a tumbler and drank from it, letting the sweet fiery liquid slide down her throat. She set down the glass with a definite click, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, an oddly coarse gesture. “But that isn’t personal enough, not for a sister. You want it close; you want it hot. You want to taste my breath as it leaves me, not so? To feel the pulse of my... blood on your hands.” She smiled, resting against the edge of the table, one leg extended forward, and tossed her head. 

“You’re trying to change the game we play,” said Dolores softly, fingers touching her stinging cheek, “to make this a match between a brash amateur and a hardened old cynic.” De Winter’s red mouth curved in delight. “You are mistaken. I killed my first man when I was thirteen.” De Winter’s eyebrows raised and she made a soft encouraging noise. “You think this is funny,” Dolores purred, “but you won’t laugh by the time I’m done.”

De Winter toyed with one end of the gauze scarf that wound around her ivory throat. “Lesson the third,” she said idly, “sex complicates things.” She glanced sidelong through her lashes, at the woman across the room. “Not for everybody,” she clarified. “I know that _I_ could fuck you and kill you and never think of you again, because I’ve done that. You?” Her eyelashes fluttered and she smiled secretly.

Dolores laughed briefly. “There’s only one way to find that out.”

“So there is.” 

She stepped to the vanity, turning her back again. This time Dolores did not move. De Winter splashed witch hazel onto a wad of fine fabric and crossed the room, lifting it to the other woman’s cheek. “For the bruise,” she said seriously, dabbing the astringent onto the swelling coming up over her cheek bone. “I’m so sorry about that, truly. It was rude of me to mark another woman’s face; we need to look after each other in a bitter world.” Dolores caught her wrist after the first dab and moved the cloth away, water springing into her eyes from the sharp smell; her other hand came up to touch de Winter’s pale cheek and when she pulled away her fingers showed traces of the powdered pearl the woman used to brighten her complexion. De Winter shrugged, unrepentant. “We do what we must to get by,” she said softly. “You know how it is.” She caught Dolores’ hand with her own and rubbed the pearl powder off with the pad of her thumb, which then moved to the hollow of her hand, circling very gently. Dolores shivered.

“It’s true what they say about you,” she commented. Hands occupied, she tipped her head in and touched de Winter’s lips with her own in the lightest of close-mouthed kisses, listening with satisfaction to the small contented sound the older woman made. Tongue flickering so very lightly she deepened the kiss, and then, when she was good and ready, teased the upper lip between her own and _bit,_ fierce enough to draw blood.

De Winter chuckled, low and deep in her throat. “Oh I like you, _mi preciosa gatita,”_ she said, licking her upper lip clean with a flick of her pink tongue, and kissed her back, tasting of copper and death. 

For a breath, two, Dolores returned it, releasing their hands to hold the curve of the other woman’s shoulders. She gripped hard. “All I want from you is death,” she said, turning her face away.

De Winter chuckled, her eyes very kind. “No,” she said, kissing Dolores’ cheek. “You want vengeance. You want peace. You want to feel alive. You want to walk away from here knowing that you have _conquered_ me.” Before Dolores could shove her away she stepped back herself, turning again. With a teasing glance over her shoulder she said, “But that you’ll have to work for.”

“I could make you _scream,”_ Dolores promised.

De Winter made an encouraging noise in her throat, her crimson skirts swaying as she moved.

Dolores lunged, seizing her forearm. This time, as de Winter turned, she settled back, letting the force, the drive of Dolores, send her into the wall, the younger woman’s weight against her and one knee bumping between her own. She blinked at Dolores with polite interest. Dolores buried one hand into her inky hair and tightened her grasp, and felt it when de Winter quivered. “You look better rumpled,” she whispered into the woman’s ear and nipped lightly at the side of her neck, where a few small tendrils of fragrant hair traced over the fair skin, and as the woman breathed deep and lifted her chin, kissed down to the pulse point in her throat, nibbling through the delicate gauze. Was it her imagination or did de Winter whimper?

Hands, at her waist, dropping from the boned armour of the bodice to the layered bulk of skirt and petticoat over her hips. They moved surely, shaping themselves around her curves, then found the hidden slits at the sides of the skirts and dipped inside, and Dolores whimpered herself at the brush of skin sliding over fine cambric, sliding over skin.

This was not how she had planned this night to go.

De Winter’s cool hands slipped further down her thighs then stopped at what she’d been seeking. Dolores cursed, silently, as the assassin’s nimble fingers unhooked her last dagger from the holster on her thigh and withdrew. She felt oddly cold as she straightened to meet de Winter’s wide, cat-green eyes.

The hilt of the dagger was nudged into her free hand.

“What?” asked de Winter blandly. “You put my maid to sleep. _Someone_ has to cut me out of my laces.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I honestly feel that the sub-genre ‘Milady has complicated, mind-game-ridden sex with a fierce and pretty young thing’ is under-represented in Musketeers fandom, and hope my humble effort will encourage others to create fic that better serves a hardworking and much put-upon lady.
> 
> Milady-and-Constance; Milady-and-d’Artagnan; Milady-and-Constance- _and_ -d’Artagnan (and who’s getting double-teamed there, eh?); the blushingly rare Milady-and-Sylvie, c’mon, we even know the young lady has a kinky streak...
> 
> // _mi preciosa gatita_ \- if Google Translate does not fail me: "my precious kitten". Yes, Milady did say it in Spanish to mess with Dolores.


	3. the smile of the cat; the stoop of the hawk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er, murderesses in lust, remember?
> 
> (Here's to relatives who read your clearly tagged erotica and then feel weird about it.)

Dolores traced her hand down the curve of de Winter’s bare flank, fascinated by the narrow slash of red barely visible on her ribs. De Winter breathed in sharply under her palm. “They don’t usually live long enough to heal the wound,” Dolores murmured, and lowered her head to kiss it gently. “So fine,” she said. “Soon I won’t be able to see the mark.”

“It was stitched by a man with clever fingers,” de Winter said dryly.

“That’s not the only thing clever about Aramis,” said Dolores. The woman beneath her huffed a laugh. “I want to see my mark on you.”

“So ambitious…” de Winter breathed.

“Oh, I want to kill you, too. Some night you won’t see me coming.”

De Winter snickered. She relaxed back into the nest of pillows, bare of everything but the golden scarf wrapped around her throat, and smiled as a cat smiles, in the droop of her eyelids, as she watched the younger woman sit neatly back on her heels. The chestnut streamers of Dolores’ hair hung loose, now, and the pleated neckline that gathered the billows of her crumpled, translucent chemise slipped off the point of her shoulder as she cocked her head, considering, and wrapped her hand around de Winter’s raised knee.

“You taste as other women do,” she said.

De Winter bubbled with laughter like honey from broken rocks. “What did you expect,” she asked sweetly, “six-fingered hands? My sinews strung subtly wrong to mark my inner nature? I am a woman. I sweat as a woman.”

“Do you scream like one?”

“The night is young,” said de Winter generously, and smiled with her eyes as Dolores shifted her position, walking forward with her hands so that she hovered over her, caging her with knees and arms and the lightest tickling touch of hair and fallen cloth. De Winter reached up again to Dolores’ hips, found the gaps in the sides of her shift and traced down to the black bands of her thigh holsters, hooking her fingers into the leather and keeping her there, suspended, that the younger woman must reach and stretch for kisses tasting of brandy. And she felt the muscles of Dolores’ thighs flex under her hands as, sated for now, she sighed into her mouth and lifted herself upright. Dolores considered her for a time, smiling softly herself, then picked up the ends of the gold-threaded scarf and wound them about her hands.

The scarf did not make for a good garrotte: too wide and wrapped too many times around de Winter’s long throat; it lacked a knot in the centre to crush the larynx properly. She watched de Winter’s face as she pulled, and de Winter watched her back without blinking once, mien unruffled even as her body trembled between Dolores’ knees and her hands tightened on her legs. After too long - not long enough - Dolores released her hold and seated herself on top of de Winter’s body in a rumple of fabric, comfortable as any nightmare as de Winter rolled her hips beneath her.

"It wasn't personal," said de Winter, when she had stilled. "With your sister. She played a crooked game fairly and lost, that's all."

"It's personal to me," said Dolores.

"Of course it is."

Dolores hummed and hooked one finger into the coils of scarf and tugged it loose. Her eyes narrowed to slits. _”Who did this?”_ she demanded.

Under the wrappings of cloth, de Winter’s throat was marked by the coarse scar of a failed hanging - and another necklace, a blotchy and swollen ring of purple and black bruises.

The corner of her mouth quirked. “The good Bishop of Vannes,” she said mildly.

Something flickered in Dolores’ eyes. Then, “That’s why Aramis was trailing the _hijo de puta_ across the city…” Unconsciously one hand reached to the bruised throat, stroking and soothing, and de Winter’s eyes flashed. She gripped Dolores’ hand hard enough that the bones creaked and the assassin winced.

Then she sniffed. “Sending a man to do your killing…”

Beneath her de Winter chuckled low and rich, pillowing her head on one arm. “My reach extends further than the length of my arm. Oh kitten, you haven’t learned that yet?”

“You storyteller,” Dolores said, looking down at her. And, “I’m not your kitten.”

De Winter smiled up at her. “But you are so very precious,” she said, twisting a lock of chestnut hair around her fingers. _”Mi preciosa.”_

Dolores lay upon her again, languid, and licked at the notch in her collarbone, where de Winter had sweated as any woman might. She whispered, “I can’t kill you when I’m not the first thing on your mind.”

De Winter hummed beneath her and soothed both hands down her back. “Lesson the fourth,” she whispered, “personal is so much more interesting.” She gripped Dolores’ hips suddenly and rolled them over. “And tonight,” she said, hovering over Dolores, her eyes sharp as a hawk sighting prey, “tonight you have my attention.” And she fell upon her.

**

Aramis came home in the hour between night and day, stamping his feet and whistling, heralded by birdsong and the plaintive _baa_ of a far-off milch-goat. He settled into a hoop-backed chair and waited, chin on fist, until she stirred.

“I think we work the maid too hard,” he told her seriously as her eyes flickered open. “Kitty fell asleep at the kitchen table.”

She shrugged, stretching under her light blanket. His eyes twinkled, and he dug into the breast of his doublet for a ring set with amethyst, carved with an episcopal seal. “A present for you, Madame,” he said, dropping it into her palm. “We even got paid - not a lot, I’ll grant, but a client is a client.”

“Pennies, knowing you,” she said. She turned the ring in her fingers, automatically calculating the weight of the gold and the value of the gem.

“You look in good humour, Madame. You rested well?”

She smiled at her partner, and drank the last of the brandy in the decanter set by the dagger still punched into the wood of the side table. The sweetness and the fire of it slid down her throat.

“I had a pleasant night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am crying because I had to cut the scene for story flow, but Milady totally laced Dolores back into her dress and pinned up her hair with one of her spare stilettos and kissed the corner of her eye before sending her on her way.
> 
> There was a lot of feminine bonding going on, is what I'm saying.


End file.
